The café where we stop to rest. The strawberry tea and scones are pretty OK I guess. I forgot what's the name of it already.
The view of the plantation.
The tea shop.
Sometimes we took a detour to Fraser Hill (Pahang) too.
Most buildings are maintained as they are since the earlier days.
Lush greeneries and cool air. A nice day for a walk. This is why we love stopping by here for a night.
1. ALWAYS say “kurang manis” (less sweet) when you are ordering a drink. ALWAYS. See how I emphasize on this. Because if you don’t, I think you’ll be drinking what that is worth 5 – 10 drinks worth of sugar and condensed milk. No kidding. I was served with milo with 1/3 of the glass consisting of condensed milk. My other mistake was to swirl the spoon too much that all of it dissolved resulting in the most revolting and sweetest milo that I’ve ever drank. So in line with “kurang manis”, DON’T EVER swirl your spoon until you have tasted the drink.
2. When buying corn – in – cup, always check how they prepare it as you may get corn – in – condensed – milk – in – cup.
3. Food to try. Here I list down and summarize the common local Malay food that you can find anywhere there. Your visit to Kelantan is NEVER complete wthout sampling at least one of these.
a. Nasi berlauk (rice with side dish of chicken/fish/duck/deer) for breakfast. If you can find etok (a mollusc, usually fried with sand. Just be careful when it’s typhoid season and be wary of hepatitis A) to go together with it, even better
b. Nasi kerabu (aka salad rice): the blue rice (sometimes green or yellow) with lots of raw vegetable, coconut and chili sambal, keropok (crackers) and budu (fermented prawn gravy, very salty so don’t overdo it) with accompanying side dishes
c. Nasi dagang: glutinous brownish rice with accompanying side dish almost similar to nasi berlauk
d. Ayam percik: roasted chicken in creamy coconut – based gravy. You may find other variety like kerang (a mollusc), tonggeng (literally, chicken’s butt), eel and fish.
e. Keropok lekor: traditional fish soft cracker
f. Laksa & laksam: there’s a difference between these two. While laksa noodles are the thin spaghetti – like rice noodle, laksam is more like kueytiau or fettuccini except way thicker but both use the same fish – and – coconut milk – based gravy with the accompanying chopped raw vegetables, a dollop of belacan (fermented prawn) and chili.
g. Belut (eel): sweet sour, fried, paprika… the Kelantanese really know how to cook their eel. Last time it used to be the food for the poor, they even use it as the base of the laksa gravy.
h. Chakuey: served with pandan kaya, this flour – based snack is a tea – time favourite.
4. Hygiene. Typhoid and food poisoning can be rampant here when in season.
5. Dengue. There’s a season for this too.
6. Budget and shopping plan. It’s very easy to go overboard with shopping here. Seen that too many already.
7. Silk batik. Forget Chow Kit in KL. Here you can get more variable and lower price.
8. Tudung. All kind of patterns and grades. In fact, those sequined and stone embedded ones which you’ll find in KL priced as Rm100+ will be mostly only RM60 – 100+ here.
9. Pengkalan Kubo. Duty - free except when you hit the limit. From table wares to house decoration items to curtains to wedding items to “branded” jerseys of your favourite team… you get the idea
10.Beach. Pantai Sri Tujuh and Pantai Cahaya Bulan.
An eatery in Pantai Sri Tujuh where we always settle down to fish while snacking.
Some kitty waiting for tit – bits.
A view of Pantai Sri Tujuh from our fishing spot.
11.Museum. Yeah, museum. A great place to get to know this culture – rich place which is situated in the state’s capital Kota Bharu with breathtaking architectural design. And next to it is the White House kopitiam which operated seasonally but served some of the best roti bakar (toasted traditional bread) and roti stim (steamed traditional bread) accompanied by their famous kaya (equivalent to marmalade, made of coconut) and butter.
12. Traditional plays: wayang kulit, Mak Yong and others at the Cultural Centre. This is the hub of all of Kelantan’s cultural activities, where tops the size of a human head spin effortlessly, giant gaily-coloured kites frolic in the air, and wayang kulit (shadow play) and rebana ubi (traditional drums) thump to the rhythm of your pulse. The Cultural Centre is located along Jalan Mahmud near Perdana Hotel and admission is free on Saturdays and Wednesdays between February and October.
13. Universiti Sains
There was this one particular one month when I was on my own in Kota Bharu was when all hell broke loose. I went on an eating rampage which I never regret until now even as I went through a hell of time to lose the extra 3 kg and the love handles gained from it. All done is done, the water’s under the bridge, I had fun so nothing bad can be said on it. I think I spent at least RM10 – 15 daily but believe me, that amount is more than enough per person daily. It’s just me losing control here… Hehe…
My relatives whom I’m staying with over the weekends were more than happy to take me to eat out, or buy packed food from many of the famous but nameless stalls such as laksam, nasi berlauk and chakuey in kaya sauce, but nothing beat what they made me eat. These folks served me some of the most delicious traditional delicacies now rarely found or difficult to find in the city such as gelotok (traditional dried sausage made from cow intestines stuffed with meat) and daging lemo’ (le – mok, the Kelantanese version of lemak or fat. There, you get the idea. Fatty meat. Real fatty meat. Chunks of fat with slivers of beef within, roasted with herbs and spices. Your shortcut to hypertension and flabs prior to getting a heart attack). What more, they took care to show me the scrumptious combinations of delicacies and the accompanying rice to eat with like etok (you can find this in Tumpat market) with nasi berlauk or nasi dagang and such.
Speaking of Tumpat, this is my mom’s hometown. My grandpa’s buried here so most raya we’d visit the grave then head off to the pasar Tumpat @ Tumpat market for breakfast or snacks. While my mom did her shopping on various goods to be brought back home to KL, we kids and dad would sit down to our favourite snacks of apam balik (the guy who sold it is from my mom’s childhood days, really old!), somtam (a Thai salad of boiled kangkong and young papaya slices in this spicy – sour sauce. Fuoh… Nice!), sometime roti canai served with sugar instead of the usual dhal gravy or curry and the-so-sweet-your-teeth-hurts milo or teh tarik kurang manis (“less sweet” by name alone…). Then mom would call us to help carry of the spices, sos pencicah, belacan, keropok ikan, pineapple, Thai mangoes and so on before we settle for our next snacks of keropok ikan with sos pencicah. So whenever we travel back to my mom’s hometown, a stop in Tumpat market is a must.
Eating in Kelantan, especially in Kota Bharu, is heavenly especially in the fasting month where numerous bazaars selling traditional and local food crop up. From the sweetest dessert to the most delicious ayam golek @ roasted chicken can be found at the most unbelievable low prices. One of my favourite bazaars was the one in Jalan Hamzah where rows and rows of my favourite food stalls stretched to the point that you would give up surveying all among the huge crowd and resorted to buying at the stalls nearest to you. (Note: beware of typhoid and food poisoning, hygiene is still the utmost priority.)
In short, Kelantan is one of the amazing places for food lovers. Sweet, as one may literally put it here. And of course, there is another famous association with Kelantan, which is shopping, mostly for the women. To the women, for a peaceful shopping trip to Pasar Siti Khadijah in Kota Bharu, leave your men and boisterous children to indulge among the numerous shops selling all sorts of tudung of all names and grades and patterns, along with the beautiful cotton batik caftans and sarongs. 1 hour is not enough, that’s why I advised you to leave the men and children to find their own amusement while your flocks bargain to your heart content. Duty – free shopping at Pengkalan Kubo also I can say mostly for women because aside from Thai – branded stuffs, the other sex would just be there to pay for your newly acquired table wares, clothes, wedding preparations, knick knacks and so forth. For the men, I suppose you can go sight – seeing around Kota Bharu city, hit the museum with your kids, take pictures near the palaces and SUK building or settle down at nearby warong (coffee shops) and chow down the above food.
Here is one webpage that can give you an idea of some of the famous Kelantanese food and travel info. Hope you guys find it helpful.
There was once this article in The New Straits Times (Malaysia) citing that Kelantan has, at least 10 types of rice (rice = nasi in Malay) even though she is not the main producer of rice in Malaysia (Kedah is, for those who doesn’t know, one of the north - west state of the Peninsular) i.e. Kedah produces the rice but Kelantan cooks it, get it? This, I absolutely agree. To make things clearer, the article was not referring to the how the rice are processed or anything along the line of rice processing and production e.g. into beras pulut or normal, plain rice whatsoever, but rather on how the rice are cooked, prepared or served. So far, during my stays there, I’ve encountered nasi kerabu, nasi dagang, nasi berlauk, nasi tumpang, nasi kukus, nasi ambang, nasi jeje and nasi air. Since I stayed with relatives most of the time, I discovered that the folks here basically eat rice at least 3 times a day! (Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Add supper and tea time then it’ll be more). How appropriate when you put down that rice is a staple food in
Here I give you some examples of the local favourites.
(This is a pic of a typical nasi berlauk with fish)
For nasi berlauk and nasi dagang, the local favourites among them would be
As for the nasi kerabu (the blue colored rice, sometimes plain white. Some people refer to it as “salad rice”), take a pick between these tasty accompanying side dishes:
with lots and lots of ulam (mixed vege that comes along with the rice), chili and sambal kelapa (coconut sambal, if you like more zest).
With these much choices of rice why bother looking for nasi lemak here in Kelantan, unless you wanna eat a sweet nasi lemak then.
